Liberal Austin homeowners surprised to find they have to pay all the taxes they voted for

posted at 9:31 pm on June 2, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

I’m really just bringing this to your attention for this quote alone. Voting and paying are different endeavors entirely. Often, when one has to pay for the things one has voted to fund, that decision becomes less flippant. This is a comment, less on the specifics of Texas’ or Austin’s tax system than the blaring disconnect between liberals in Austin who are voting for higher taxes and the actual paying of the taxes. Which, as it turns out, is painful, discouraging, and can be a detriment to the fabric of the city.

In Texas, there are more than 3,900 localities that impose property taxes, including school districts, counties, and special districts. Texas’ property tax burden has grown from approximately 1 percent of value in the early 1980s to nearly 3 percent today.

The rising burden from property tax is worse for the housing-rich but income-poor elderly homeowners. For example, elderly homeowners tend to move more often to reduce their property tax burden, which is an additional cost of owning a home for those who can least afford to move.

Interestingly, another reason voters hate property taxes is because they are more “salient.” A salient tax means that the burden is transparent, easy to understand, and hard to avoid. If paid directly, property taxes are found to be more salient compared with sales taxes applied at checkout or income taxes withheld from a paycheck.

New research suggests that if Texas eliminates its local property tax system, ranked as the 14th most oppressive in the nation, and instead replaces those lost revenues with an adjusted sales tax, then the ensuing flood of capital investment and business activity could ignite the Texas economy for years to come.

That’s right, just by changing how Texas governments collect public dollars—but not how much they spend—the Legislature can give the economy and people’s wallets a major boost.

By how much, you ask? Our estimates suggest quite a bit.

Either way, I don’t think Gretchen Gardner is ever going to make the connection between her voting pattern and her bill.

Blowback

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This is really unrelated, but here in San Antonio, they just decided to remove 2 miles of bike lanes the lefty city council had decided a working class neighborhood needed. They didn’t ask the citizens, and the citizens hate the bike lanes because they make car traffic more congested. Duh. Our city council is often doing things the people don’t want them to do. It’s not like the Austin situation because our citizens were actually sensible in this case.

the blaring disconnect between liberals in Austin who are voting for higher taxes and the actual paying of the taxes.

Bingo MK but it applies to most things about the progressive agenda. So many of these limousine liberals want everyone else taxed but hold on to their millions/billions (Gore, Soros, Buffett, Gates, Warren, et al). I will listen to talk about higher taxes when these hypocrites fork over their money first.

It’s up to the little people to clean up their messes, darlin’.

But it is also a reflection of the ignorance of the Libby Freordies of the world – the law of unintended consequences and the existence of a common human nature. The latter exists outside of the steely cold walls of academia and think tanks. And MSNBC.

In CA , we voted long time ago to keep our property taxes stable as Prop 13. Now the moonbeam will go ahead and reverse all that , resulting in total chaos and instability , adding to the chaos we face already due to local ” parcel tax” increases voted by parasites who pay no taxes . How many effing chirruns and ninos are there in CA that we can’t feed and ejumatate with a few hundred billions of dollars every year ?

Did you vote for all the parks and stuff? Property taxes are a bear since for all intents and purposes, you never really own your home. I’m just saying that she (you) could have property taxes and state income taxes.

They don’t even have to raise the propery tax rate to screw you.
All they do is say your assessed value is worth more this year than it was last year.
You can protest it, but the board is composed of political appointees who are usually realtors or relatives of government officials and they always side with the tax assessor-collector’s value.
I’m all for scrapping the property tax and expanding the sales tax. Include food and OTC drugs.

Gretchen, like so many progressives, assumed that someone else would be paying for all those ‘improvements’ she was so happy to vote for over the years. She voted for them because got a kick out of being a ‘good person’ and ‘doing the right thing’.

Someone else usually means ‘anyone but me’ to progressives in real terms, but to the progressive it all to frequently also means often means ‘ that money will just magically appear’.

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

“I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

Steps in… it’s called paying the piper, from a cautionary tale for children…

Either way, I don’t think Gretchen Gardner is ever going to make the connection between her voting pattern and her bill.

She will not… Liberalism is a mental disorder… Liberals cannot connect and see the extreme contradiction and their utter hypocrisy with the what they preach and how they want to live… They preach against human nature but yet they want to live to the fullest of their human nature…

Either way, I don’t think Gretchen Gardner is ever going to make the connection between her voting pattern and her bill.

Libs don’t ever make the connection. They vote a certain way because it makes them “feel good.” Then comes the bill, just like Obammy-care, and they are actually shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, to learn there has been gambling going on.
Nope, no connection to reality in the “party of science.”

For liberals, it’s always, “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree.” They love it when they can propose all of these goodies and have someone else pay for them. It reminds me of New Hampshire, when the Massachusetts liberals moved there to get away from the taxes and then tried to put the same things into effect that caused the high taxes in Massachusetts.

There should be a law that, when liberals move to a conservative state, they have to not be allowed in the decision process for 20 years. They just don’t understand the process and don’t comprehend what’s necessary to keep taxes low. Services are one thing, excess is another.

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

This is one of the many reasons I assert liberals are brain dead, selfish, idiots.

Liberalism is a mental disorder that has so many twisted aspects to it that it’s hard to capture them all in one list.

It’s also one of the reasons I say only property owners should vote, but this idiot clearly misses the point. She wants her goodies, but doesn’t want to pay for it, owns a home, yet votes for idiots like obama. What are we to do with this diseased portion of society?

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

Too dumb to breathe without assistance yet allowed to vote. She’ll move to another area and continue her idiocy there. Looters and non producers, human locusts ravaging the land providing nothing of substance. She also expects someone else to step up and fix the problems she created.

Having high property taxes and no income tax is actually a good thing.

Make your money in Texas, either live in a hovel or own ag-property to escape the criminally confiscatory school taxes. then retire anywhere else that has lower property taxes.

It is good for Texas because the greatest medical cost burden after illegal aliens is the elderly. If Texas prices out fixed income people so that they move to high income/low property states, then their health cost problems are someone elses.

Also, what is better about the higher dependency on property taxes rather than income/sales taxes is that the carrying costs for real-estate are higher, which discourages buy and hold investors and keeps property relatively cheaper than elsewhere.

Still, the damned school systems are way over funded. Drive through Texas and in any town or small city the best buildings by far are always the school buildings. Everything else can be ramshackle or adequate, but ALL of the schools are palaces in comparison.

After that stupid $60million stadium debacle in Allen, TX, you would think that these morons would be a bit more responsible with the cash – but no, the rampant irresponsibility that goes unpunished only encourages them to buy Godzilla-tron scoreboards for the little reprobates to play under four games a year.

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

I am almost apoplectic with schadenfreude-laden fits of uncontrollable laughter.

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”

All of the ads for a Proposition on our ballot tomorrow assure voters that approving a $400 Million Bond will NOT increase taxes.

But was the ad does not say is that if the $400 Million Bond proposition fails, then our taxes would be REDUCED.

This is because the current “debt management policy” in my area is “to issue new general obligation bonds only as old ones are retired, keeping the property tax impact from general obligation bonds approximately the same over time.”

Alas, the “Low Information Voters” in my deep blue area always approve issuing new Bonds, and then they wonder why our taxes are among the highest in the country.

New research suggests that if Texas eliminates its local property tax system, ranked as the 14th most oppressive in the nation, and instead replaces those lost revenues with an adjusted sales tax, then the ensuing flood of capital investment and business activity could ignite the Texas economy for years to come.

If you’re the liberals in Austin, you’d love this tax, because Austin’s a retail-rich area — i.e., people from areas outside the city limits will come into town to help fund your liberal projects with their purchases, while the liberals won’t be going out into the outlying areas to fund the suburban/rural city and county infrastructure via property taxes (this would especially be a killer for medium and smaller-population counties with high oil and gas reserves, which get most of their ad valorem taxes off mineral valuations. Take that away and force those counties to live on a higher sales tax, when residents are going to the bigger counties for their bigger purchases, and you’re setting up an urban/rural economic divide similar to New York City-vs.-Upsstate New York or Coastal California-vs.-Inland California).

What’s really encouraging regarding property taxes in Texas is when you get a breakdown as to where the tax dollars go. Forty percent goes to public schools. And then it’s even more encouraging to find out that 90% of the students in multiple areas around Texas are either illegal aliens or the children of illegal aliens. Gosh. Makes me wish they’d up my property tax rates so I could pay an extra 1 or 2k per year. /s

Still, the damned school systems are way over funded. Drive through Texas and in any town or small city the best buildings by far are always the school buildings. Everything else can be ramshackle or adequate, but ALL of the schools are palaces in comparison.

Mmm, whaddaya wanna bet Missy SadFace Austin Homeowner purchased more house than she can afford, usually pays the minimums on her 6 credit cards and doesn’t balance her checkbook (notably by using the close-your-eyes-and-WISH accounting method).

If you are generally fiscally responsible in your life (i.e. a frugal tightwad who documents where your pennies go and makes sure there are enough pennies to pay for everything) then how likely is it you will be blindsided by these totally foreseeable consequences?

Some people have been known to carry an umbrella when rain is predicted, Missy…

The “not a tax increase” line in bond issues is a flat out lie. Let’s say a bond passes to put 0.15% tax on the value of property. They look at that year’s tax assessment, apply the tax, and the dollar value of the tax is then fixed for the life of the bond. However, when the bond expires, and they want to pass a new one, they sell it as the same 0.15% and thus not a tax increase. But, the value of your property changed from 130,000, where the original assessment was calculated, to 195,000 over the time since the old bond passed. Boom…tax hike. Sneaky little turds.

Texas’ problem is that the housing market has really recovered. The vacant homes got scooped up quick by investors and handy home buyers, and when the economy stabilized, our market recovered. My home is worth more now than it was before the bust, thus my aforementioned property tax increase.

…can you imagine someone actually hitting that?…we could send it to sex-offenders for conjugal visits through out the federal penitentiary system…and if it talked during the visit…it would cause immediate profuse castration!…and it wouldn’t be ‘chemical’…..what a reformation…no legislation would be needed!

I moved from TExas for retirement reasons, but I’ve noted how sky high those property taxes are. My wife and I could never afford to move back. We could never pay a 3% rate, or $18,000, for a $600,000 house. You are absolutely screwed if you live in Texas and don’t have a high income. And I say this as someone who loves Texas and has never voted for a Democrat.

3%? With compounding, that means that you get to buy your property, at full value, all over again from the state every 24 years!! Over and over and over…
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on June 2, 2014 at 10:03 PM

If only it were so simple. You are not paying the rate on the purchase price. You are paying the rate on the “assessed market value.” I purchased my house in 2005. It has doubled in value, even though I have fought the assessment every year. Therefore, I am now paying 3% of 200%, or 6%, meaning that I get to purchase my house every 16 years.

But if you want to do the math, and assume my assessed value continues to double every 10 years, and that my tax rate triples every 20 years, then this means that in another 20 years, I’ll be paying 70% of my purchase price in 20 years… every year.

Since reality is somewhere in the middle, I can see my property tax being 25% annually in 20 years. How many of you out there can pay 25% of your home’s purchase price every year, and still make your other bills and (maybe) mortgage?

Still, with Quantitative Easing XII still to come, it’s quite possible that 25% of the purchase price of my home could very well be the same as the price of a loaf of bread in 20 years.

Gretchen’s at the breaking point because she hasn’t planned ahead. I’m sure she bought a cute little bungalow just south of the river, kicked back, and watched Austin grow. More grow, more demand… higher values, higher tax.
I took what I had and bought what I needed with more backyard than I can keep up with. And a forty foot pecan tree. My property taxes are less than a grand a year and frozen at age 65. And the weird parts of Austin are less than an hour south. They’re welcome to it.

And there’s not a whole lot of bleeding hearts around this neighborhood.

We try to keep them contained within Austin but they keep escaping to Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. I live in Grand Prairie and pay about $4K in taxes because I don’t vote for every stupid liberal tax hike that these morons try to push through. Since this Austinite is an “artist” I suspect she had better stay put. Texans don’t buy “pi-s Christ” kinds of “art”. I suggest California for two reasons one because she will feel right at home and two she won’t complain about Texas property taxes after she finds out how much Cali residents pay for their little liberal utopia.

Good to see Texas Public Policy Foundation quoted here. They are the preeminent conservative state based think tank in the nation and they lay a lot of the intellectual groundwork that helps guide conservative legislators in the state legislature.

Another good reason to change from property to sales tax is that is is more…what’s the word the left likes to use…socially just. Everyone pays, not just homeowners. Oh, sure, renters may pay some property taxes as a sort of pass through tax bundled in their rent…but it’s not a salient tax. As far as they’re concerned they’re not paying property taxes.

I know of a small town in Australia where local residents agitated for ages to get the speed limit (60kmh) on the main street reduced because they thought it was encouraging ‘hoons’ (Australian for speeding young drivers). The local police sergeant took it to the government and the govt agreed to drop the speed limit on the street. The signs were changed to 40kmh and the cops followed up with frequent radar traps. Six months later, angry residents held a town meeting to complain about the new speed limit. Said one old dude who’d voted to drop the speed limit previously: “It was mean to catch hoons but it’s only catching people like me!”

Waaaaay back when in 2008 I moved to Grand Junction, CO for a short time. One day, while waiting for the real estate office to open so I could see what was available to rent, I stopped by some Mom and Pop bagel/coffee shop thingee.

I noticed all sorts of pro-Obama stuff in the windows and campaign literature sprinkled all over. A real Kool-Aid drinker. Off in the corner a middle-aged woman, who I took to be at least the part-owner, was complaining to another woman about taxes, the cost of doing business, etc….

Normally, I would have empathy for a small business owner, but I wonder how much she’s liking the whole Hopenchange thing now? Dumbasses come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and income strata. I hope she went belly up.

Ok, I’m not looking for any sympathy, but this Rick Perry Texas Miracle thing is as transparent as a video being responsible for Benghazi tragedy. We may not have an income tax, but our property taxes are absolutely insane and Rick’s Robin Hood legislation is as socialist as anything that existed before Obamacare. In my district more than 50% of our property taxes receipts are sent out of the district. They are greedily creating assessments that are in fact forcing people out of their homes because their property tax assessments are beyond ludicrous. At this point I would gladly approve a more moderate assessment structure with an income tax. I have paid more than $750k in property taxes over the last 15 years for a house that cost me $1.3 million. Rick Perry is a slick Aggie fraud who has spun this “no income tax” scam unconscionably. If the state really was performing as well as advertised, property tax reform would be high on his list and Robin Hood would be repealed immediately.